Over the past few years, performance enhancing drugs and money have been claimed to be the leading causes of preventing the Mayweather Jr. vs. Pacquiapo showdown form taking place.

For some time Mayweather Jr. was confident that his gut feeling of Manny Pacquaio using PEDs was, well, not a just gut feeling at all. He blatantly claimed that there is no way that a fighter can go up in weight so fast, while experiencing no decline in speed or power. After some time, both fighters ended up across the phone line, trying to come to some sort of an agreement, which ended fruitlessly, with Pacquiao asking for more money than Floyd was willing to pay.

After all this, the newest thorn in the possibility of the fight, at least according to Mayweather Jr., is Top Rank’s Bob Arum. For whatever reason, Mayweather Jr. is not willing to negotiate and discuss the fight any further, unless Arum steps down and is not involved in any aspect of the Mayweather Jr. vs. Pacquiao event.

Most boxing fans as well as the fight media, including myself, simply don’t see this happening any time soon. Pacquiao’s trainer Freddie Roach on the other hand, believes that if Pacquiao decides that he wants that fight bad enough, Arum would have no problem stepping aside and letting someone else take over, just to make the fighters and their fans happy.

“I think Arum being the promoter and the professional that he is, will give Manny that fight. I like that September date, I’m pushing for it. I’m gonna call Manny this afternoon. All he has to do is call Bob, tell him who he wants, Mayweather, and I think it’ll get done,” stated Roach with confidence in a recent interview with TheSweetScience.

I wish it were that easy. I think that if this was the case, we would already be looking at a rematch, rather than scavenging for the negotiation to move forward in any way. There are contracts and commitments that are not easily broken. Not participating in a fight like that, means a loss of the biggest payday not only for Manny and Mayweather Jr., but for Top Rank as well.

Maybe Bob Arum is simply waiting until Mayweather Jr. runs out of marketable names to fight, and comes to a realization that Pacquiao may be his only formidable opponent left, and the fight would have to be negotiated with Top Rank, like it or not.

Hopefully Freddie Roach’s call will make a push in the right direction.